The Owl
by WhenInDoubtLeave
Summary: One night Batman runs into a mysterious assassin that seems familiar somehow, just who exactly is it? i am awful at summaries, rated T cause i'm paranoid.
1. Chapter 1

new story! sorry if some stuff is off, pm me about it and i might try and change it, also please tell me what you think of this! it makes me super happy when i get favorites, follows, and reviews! it even makes me happy when people just read my awful writing, i wrote this pretty much because i got an obsession with dick-as-a-talon stories and was really upset or unimpressed with incomplete or just ones i didn't like and wanted to do one my way.

disclaimer: I don't own anything

 _Beware the court of owls that watches all the time_

 _Ruling from a shadowed perch behind granite and lime_

 _They see you at your hearth they see you in your bed_

 _Speak not a whispered word of them or they will send the Talon for your head._

Bruce Wayne sighed, today was the anniversary of his greatest failure, Richard Grayson. That boy's parents had fallen to their death's today and he had disappeared before Bruce could help him. He got up from his desk and left the study through the clock, to the batcave. Jason had finally come home a few months ago and while he still occasionally killed people, he usually didn't when Bruce or the other two boys, Tim and Damian. The four of them geared up for patrol and left.

Richard stood with a blank expression as his grandfather, William Cobb told him his first mission. He knew he was the youngest at eight years old to be given a mission as the Talon. Cobb had been the Talon for a while and now his successor was about to make his first kill, to become the official Talon.

The new Talon of the court of owls stood on a roof at the edge of the city, marveling at the sky. It had been two, now three years since he had been outside of the court's underground base. That had been the day his parents died, his birthday and now he was going to kill his first person. Talon moved through the shadows, no camera, or set of eyes could have seen the young Talon. He reached the building the target was in; it was a rich man that the court wanted out of their way. Talon slipped through the window into the room where the target was on his computer and perched on the edge of the sill. He removed a feather shaped knife and threw it directly in to the man's chest. Dead instantly, Richard Grayson was now a murderer.

Batman swung up a building that his knew housed a suspect for a case he was working on. He reached the window and entered the room. What he found inside was surprising. The man he had come to interrogate was slumped over his desk with a gold, feather shaped knife stabbed through his chest. Batman looked around and spotted a shadow leaping out the window and gave chase. Fifteen minutes later the shadow stopped and turned at the edge of a building. The slight figure could only be a child. The kid was covered from head to toe in black armor with gold embellishments, over his eyes were golden goggles shaped like the face of an owl with orange lenses. The assassin tilted his head at batman and flipped over the edge of the roof. Batman scurried over to the edge and looked down, the strange assassin was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

So! look at this i actually am updating this story! i hate writers block. but anyway here we go!

Talon saw the Batman approaching and quickly ducked into a shadow before sprinting to the window, Bats narrowed his eyes and gave chase but Talon knew what he was doing and had to resist the urge to cackle in his face as he arrived at the roof of the building with an entrance to one of the many bolt holes the court had hidden around the city, all he had to do was hop into the air vent exhaust twenty feet below him, piece of cake. Once he was well on his way back to base, one rather complicated looking acrobatic maneuver that was child's play to him, heh, he was only eight; and a round about path through various tunnels until he was at the entrance to the underground lair of one gotham secret society, really you couldn't fault them for being cautious, there was the bat after all.

If you couldn't tell, he was in a much better mood than earlier. He tended to be like that, there was no social interaction in the court and all talons were trained to suppress emotions anyway, _and_ he had been here since he was about six and a half, maybe, he spent a while in other court bases before coming here, he wasn't sure though, they didn't tell him dates very often and the ones he did know were from when they moved him around during his training. But _anyway_ he was going to be a bit south of normal. Earlier he had also been concerned about what killing would be like, his parents always told him it was bad but that was really all they wanted him to do here. He of course, was also worried about what would happen to him if he failed, punishment was not at all pleasant. He thought back to the batman; he obviously was not expecting Di-no talon to be there or he would have reacted sooner, the court had shown him enough footage and articles on both the bat and his alter ego to be able to tell. He also was aware that his target had been a higher up of a large gang that was encroaching on one of the courts main bases, hence talon being sent out; not that they knew that of course. He had spent a short time under Wayne's care, if it could be called that; the man was never around, either a Wayne Enterprises or his night job, not that Dick had known about the night job until the very last night he was there. In the middle of the day when the butler, Alfred I think his name was; was out pruning the gardens and otherwise caring for the grounds, and Wayne had been at work, as always. he'd accidentally run into an old clock in the study when doing flips and such around the room. What? he'd been bored! To his great surprise the clock opened and when he stepped down the stairs through the hidden door way he discovered a very high tech; rather batty cave and quickly made the connection. Thinking that Batman would do something nasty to him because he found out his secret, he packed a bag and ran away as soon as he could. Two days later he had been found by the court and his life got a whole lot more painful. Dick had never told anyone that he knew much less give away his identity so that had to count for something, even if the court already knew, however they kept it to the top members of the court; and him, being the oh-so-special gray son of gotham was included in that group now that he was officially talon. He knew that batman would never kill anyone, even if someone else was to die instead though; before he was trained by the court he'd idolized Batman, course now he knew all the flaws in that but you had to give the man some credit for his determination to never break his moral code for anything; good luck joker.

He'd heard from eavesdropping on older talons in the halls Wayne had apparently adopted two other kids and also had one biological son whose mother was apparently Talia al Ghul. He kind of wanted to meet him, he was also the current Robin.

Robin, his blood boiled just thinking about it. He'd told Bruce about the nickname after seeing a few of the birds out the window at dinner, which had been the only time he ever really saw the man. Then when he got his first son to be his sidekick he called him Robin, coincidence? 'Batman and Robin' does sound rather catchy after all; mentally he snorted, yeah right. There was also the fact that both the other two boys he adopted had black hair and blue eyes; conclusion? Dick had run away so Wayne just replaced him with someone else, he had obviously been intended to be a charity case to bring more publicity, not that he didn't have enough already. Who knows, maybe if he'd stuck around he would have been the first Robin, sidekick to the great Batman, constantly getting captured and tortured by the villain of the week. Nope, no thanks, not for him. He hoped that Wayne's current kids were treated better, maybe Bruce learned his lesson with Dick.

He reached the equipment room and unloaded all of his gear until he was in the typical plain black pants and long sleeve shirts worn by all the talons. A lower ranking talon then lead him to a room to be debriefed by Cobb, he would never call him his grandfather though; back in the circus everyone earned their title, DNA tests meant next to nothing.

"Was your mission a success, gray son?" he asked me.

"yes sir, the target was eliminated and while Batman was present and gave chase before I was able to lose him, he did not engage me, it was all to easy." I replied; my eyes flashing gold at the last comment. I knew from the dangerous glare on his face that he was displeased that I continued to rebel in that way. The eyes are a side effect of the electrum serum I was injected with when I was first captured. Electrum is given in two stages, the first provides a modest healing factor and also slightly enhances the senses, especially sight; hence the gold eyes, which happens when ever there is little light, the body experiences a surge of adrenaline, or if there is a lot of more negative emotions or stress. I really hated the training days where they made me memorize things like that; if I couldn't recite it back to them word for word they would punish me rather severely. The next stage of electrum kills the subject then resurrects them; that's also where the majority of the weakness to low temperatures comes from, however the first stage also has some effect caused by the cold. I only had the first stage and was glad for it; I definitely didn't want to be some zombie assassin that was completely controlled by the court, which was another side affect of the second injection. The second stage was only given to Talons when they reached their physical peak though, so I still had a while.

Cobb nodded stiffly and signaled that I be led back to my room, which probably meant there would be no dinner, or breakfast considering how early it probably was. Oh well, a least their letting me sleep and it doesn't look like their going to put me in the sensory deprivation room, that's probably the worst thing they ever did to me; not the most painful, that would be the electrum injections; but definitely the worst.

That night I dreamed of a bat fighting with owls who were holding tightly to three little birds in their talons.


End file.
